Enq. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle?
Theo. Why should we? Being well-occupied people, we can hardly afford to lose time in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. The Unknowable is capable of relations only in its parts to each other, but is non-existent as regards any finite relations. The visible universe depends for its existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or prayers.
Enq. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer?
Theo. Not in prayer taught in so many words and repeated externally, if by prayer you mean the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee, which was inaugurated by the Jews and popularised by the Pharisees.
Enq. Is there any other kind of prayer?
Theo. Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather an internal command than a petition.
Enq. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so?
Theo. To “our Father in heaven”—in its esoteric meaning.
Enq. Is that different from the one given to it in theology?
Theo. Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to his Father which is in secret (read, and try to understand, ch. vi. v. 6, Matthew), not to an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God; and that “Father” is in man himself.